The earth has a way of healing.

		Take part in discussions The Monongahela Conference will have a formal discussion about the Braddock project from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Friday night at Artspace 303, 303 8th Ave., Homestead. On June 25, the discussion will be aboutmmines and streams in the Streets Run watershed, again from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Artspace 303. The artists who are working on the projects also will be available weekdays through the month of June. In Braddock, they will be on the second floor of the Braddock Carnegie Library from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays. The Braddock project also is sponsoring a discussion and free boat trip on the Monongahela to look at Braddock's shoreline on 10 a.m. Saturday. Reservations are required; call 412-400-4542. In Homestead, the artists will be at Artspace 303 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays. In McKeesport, the artists will be at the People's Building, 301 5th Ave., from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays.

In the Mon Valley, where industry once ran strong, steel mills are rusting and weeds are growing in the cracks of the concrete.

Over time, those weeds give way to trees and even the land where coal was once mined goes back to a more natural state.

In Braddock, McKeesport and Hays, artists and architects are looking at how to embrace the re-emergence of nature on a large scale after industry has gone.

In Hays, the artists are hoping to preserve it.

The artists are in the Mon Valley for the month of June under a $75,000 grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in a program called The Monongahela Conference.

Three teams of artists have chosen a project on which to focus their attention.

McKeesport

Jackie Brookner, Stephanie Flom and Ann Rosenthal spent part of last week sitting on a river bank at the edge of a marina parking lot between the marina and a public housing community.

Brookner, of New York City, said she was sitting right where a bicycle trail should be.

McKeesport sits at the confluence of the Youghiogheny and Monongahela rivers, which could be considered the nation's most difficult confluence of rivers to spell.

Despite the expansive riverfront, the city has few recreational opportunities along the banks.

Brookner, Flom, of Highland Park, and Rosenthal, of Baltimore, are spending the month looking at what can be done to enhance the community's relationship to its rivers.

"Our first goal was to find out what people want," Brookner said.

What they have found is interest in seeing two hiking and biking trails expanded. McKeesport is not the confluence of the Steel Heritage and the Youghiogheny trails, but it could be.

"There's been this separation of people from the shores," Rosenthal said.

Over the years, she said, the river banks have been claimed by industry and used to load and unload goods from barges. As part of that development, the people also were cut off from the shores by railroad tracks built along the rivers.

"There's a historical disconnect between the public and the rivers because industry is in the way. They claimed it," Rosenthal said.

Getting people to think about how to use the rivers is one of her goals.

"It's a matter of changing the perception of the rivers and the perception people have of the rivers. I think people really recognize the rivers are the future of the town," she said.

McKeesport has a marina, but to protect the private boats docked on the Youghiogheny, access to the river is fenced off. In this case, the artists said, the public use of the river has become a private use.

Once defined, the project of Brookner, Flom and Rosenthal will probably include drawings of what the public uses of the rivers could look like.

Hays

Tom Merriman was out in the rain, at the top of a waterfall, dropping a measuring tape down to his wife, Connie.

He was about to retrieve a camera with a motion detector that he had strapped to a tree nearby, but he measured the waterfall as he passed it.

The water was cascading from a shale overhang to a pool 16 feet below, they determined. The water then ran in a stream for about 200 yards until it hit a culvert and was directed into a pipe that ran under the railroad tracks, under Carson Street and into the Monongahela River.

Along Carson Street, almost exactly where the stream was hidden underground, there was a series of small signs, like political signs, forming a message: Breathe Air Cleaned by Hays Woods.

The waterfall is in danger of being filled as part of a development to build a horse racing track.

The Merrimans, of Elizabeth Township, are spending their month trying to use art to question whether that would be the best use of the land.

The development would cover nearly 650 acres that has been extensively undermined but left undisturbed for decades.

In the approximately 60 years since coal was dug out of the ground there, Tom Merriman said, mature woods have grown,

"They're about to take 650 acres of woodland that is three miles from Downtown and strip it and mine it and build a race track," he said.

Though it is private land, people in the surrounding homes now use it like a hidden park to bike, hike, bird watch and hunt.

Its mostly known as the 650 acres in Hays or "the old LTV site." Connie Merriman has decided neighbors will take more interest in something that has a name, so she came up with Hays Woods.

"What we're doing, at this point, is starting to get 'Hays Woods' out there and get that picked up as a term," she said.

Connie Merriman is also asking residents to come up with names for the six unnamed streams that run through the property to the Monongahela.

The challenge of the Monongahela Confluence project, Tom Merriman said, is using visual arts to effect change. The couple has created a poster that points out that this open space is larger than Frick Park, Pittsburgh's largest park.

In a session with local residents last week, the two artists talked to people interested in stopping the race track project.

One suggestion, from Mike Stelmasczyk, 53, of Baldwin Borough, was that Connie Merriman should copyright the phrase Hays Woods before the developer uses the term.

Pittsburgh Palisades is the name land owner Charles Betters used in the proposal for the race track. That plan calls for strip mining the area for about two years and using the top layers of the hills to fill in the valleys. That mining method would leave a plateau on which Betters could build a horse racing track, a shopping center and housing.

While the Merrimans are questioning the development of that land, their project's underwriter won't take a position, said Tim Collins, director of 3 Rivers 2nd Nature.

Three Rivers is a part of the Carnegie Mellon University Studio for Creative Inquiry, which obtained the grant for the Monongahela Confluence project. He said the grant was to encourage artists to work in the Mon Valley. The Merrimans studio space is in Homestead; they have chosen to look at land in Hays.

"We don't determine their projects," Collins said.

Braddock

Christine Brill and Jonathan Kline took turns listening to the views of resident Ernie Stanton, 92, on the second floor of Braddock Carnegie Library.

"They really didn't get a chance to ask me anything because I was doing most of the talking," Stanton said.

Brill and Kline, architects who live in Lawrenceville, have built a model of Braddock and North Braddock with little wooden replicas of each building.

They are looking at open space in the borough. More than 200 buildings have been torn down in the last decade and those lots, now vacant, have been taken over by weeds and grasses. Even wildlife is returning to what used to be a heavily industrial area.

On a recent tour Braddock's shoreline, Brill and Kline saw deer, turtles, ducks, swallows and something that she said looked like a walking fish but could have been a platypus.

Other wildlife in Braddock includes rabbits, raccoons, turkeys and groundhogs.

The architects' model of the boroughs shows a lot of green space in the towns, if the land along the railroad tracks that creates the border between the two boroughs is included. The model also shows what will be demolished if the Mon-Fayette Expressway is built between Talbot and Washington Avenues. When Kline removes those buildings, it's like a scar through the middle of Braddock.

Using drawings from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, he is also working on a model of how the towns will look once the expressway is built.